


Heal Us

by kinggyu



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, everyone else in seventeen is here dont worry, mma fighter!seungcheol, nurse!joshua
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23749573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinggyu/pseuds/kinggyu
Summary: People say that on your 18th birthday, whatever bruise your soulmate gets, you get as well. Joshua never really believed in the whole soulmate thing though, but what if he met his soulmate— that bruised up MMA fighter who just entered the emergency room?
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48





	Heal Us

**Author's Note:**

> helo ! this is actually inspired by a tiktok i saw jdfhkjghdf so props to them but the person deleted the vid :c also obviously i am 100% not sure with some of the terms, i am not a nursing student nor do i actually watch MMA fights so all the terms would just be coming straight from google.

People say that on your 18th birthday, whatever bruise your _soulmate_ gets, you get as well. 

Joshua never really believed in the whole soulmate thing, he says soulmates aren't planned by fate, it is something you build with someone. Another reason he doesn't really care much about that kind of stuff is because he's too busy memorizing all the medical terms for their nursing licensure exam. 

You could say helping people has always been Joshua’s thing, aside from just being really interested in all kinds of diseases. Sounds weird but in theory he wants to know how each works so he knows how he would be able to cure them. 

Now bruises, everyone’s fairly familiar with them. Getting them on your shins when you fell off the bike, or when you accidentally bump it on the underside of your table, or when you would get booster shots and it would bruise up wherever the needle went. 

Bruises show up because of the blood from the damaged cells that come up near the surface of your skin. 

Now, Joshua has always been careful and he would say he’s rarely had bruises in his teenage years. That’s why, around his 3rd year in college he was very worried when he suddenly got a large bruise on his right arm. 

“Josh! What happened?” Seungkwan shrieks when he sees the bruise when Joshua lifts his arms up to take a bite out of his burger. It was around lunch and they had just finished an exam, he really needed this burger. 

Scrunching his brows at what he just heard his friend say he turns his arm and indeed sees a huge bruise on the side of his right arm. “What— I—” he just blankly stares at it, placing his burger down for safekeeping. He examines it a bit. It looked fairly new as there were still blue and purple hues on it. But he doesn’t remember hitting anything that would cause a bruise that big? 

“Did you fight someone?” Mingyu asks worriedly, their other friends also look at him with sad eyes. “Joshuji? Fight someone? Doubt it” Jeonghan speaks up from beside him. “But what did you do, dude? You getting a bruise is so out of the blue” he asks further. 

Joshua racks his brain for a possible answer and explanation for this bruise but he really can’t think of anything. Yesterday he just studied all day for the exam, ate at the right time, took a bath, and slept. _So it can’t have been from studying? Or eating? Or taking a bath? Or maybe I sleepwalked? But I’ve never heard my roommates complain about me sleepwalking?_

“I— I don’t know?” he answers, still looking very confused. “Ooh, what if it’s _his soulmate_ ” he hears Seokmin say in a singsong manner. 

_My soul.. Mate?_

“He doesn’t believe in that shit” Jeonghan replies. As his proclaimed best friend, he does know pretty much everything about Joshua. “You never know, maybe they do” Seokmin replies, raising his brow and smiling. 

“Oh! I did hear from a friend in my hometown that he found his soulmate! They even tested it out to find out if it was real, like one of them bumped their shin on the side of a table and then the next day they have the same bruise!” Seungkwan narrates enthusiastically. _So maybe they are real_.

“Say, they _are_ real, bruising is such a shitty way of knowing your soulmate” Mingyu says and the others actually agree. Why find the person you are fated to through a sign of a painful experience (e.g. hitting your shin, or having a syringe up your skin)?

Joshua still looks very confused and bothered while his friends buzz about around him. “Okay but if they are real, what do you think is Joshua’s soulmate doing to get that big of a bruise?” Seungkwan says and now all eyes were again on him.

“I— let’s not talk about this anymore, I— I don’t even believe this crap,” he starts and picks up his burger once again. “Maybe I did hit something and for some reason I just didn’t feel it, maybe my skin is just, I don’t know, numb or something.”

His friends look at him worriedly for a second before shrugging and going back to eating their food and talking about the latest season of Kingdom. 

⁂

The next time he saw a bruise, it was on his cheek. 

He wakes up and does his normal routine, except now it’s not so normal anymore. This surely woke him up better than his alarm clock. It was _again_ obviously fresh seeing as it was still mostly red and blue in hue. He raises his hand slowly and turns his face to the right a bit and examines his bruise. 

_Who the_ **_fuck_ ** _did I fight last night? Wait, I— didn’t?_

Like his previous bruise this one also didn’t hurt when he touched it. Which is _very_ weird. It’s like, everything he learned from his classes was just a lie because he was living breathing proof that what was taught to him is not what he was experiencing. 

Speaking of class. 

_FUCK I have to go to class looking like this?_

He could either 1) not go to class although he can't miss a lecture, he's sure it would be part of the finals; 2) wear some kind of scarf up to just below his eyes, but people would obviously be suspicious of it; or 3) ask someone for some concealer and maybe _try_ to cover it up.

After some deliberation and weighing he decides to just go with the last one as it would only raise suspicion from possibly one person, the one he would borrow the concealer from. 

The only person in a close radius that he can think of at this moment would be Minghao, not only does he most definitely have a concealer but he was also just a few doors down the hallway. He rushes to his phone from his side table. And of course, its battery is dead. _Well, fuck._

That would only mean, he would have to walk down the hall to his friend’s room while also trying to avoid anyone who could be mortified at the huge bruise on the side of his face. This felt like such a mission impossible-esque operation. He wasn’t Tom Cruise enough for this. 

But, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

He grabs his hoodie from his desk chair and puts it on. Covering his head with the hood he opens his door and looks left and right, clear. He silently closes his door and cautiously makes his way to the third door on his left. 

But of course, to his luck, as he passes by the 1st door the 2nd one just _suddenly_ opens. 

“Hey man” Hansol appears coming out of Seungkwan’s room. The two have been a thing for a while now, they’re actually very cute. Although, coming out of a room that wasn’t his just meant something. “Hyung!” of course Seungkwan was by the door as Hansol was leaving. Of course. 

“Something wrong with your teeth? Does it hurt?” Hansol asks. You see, as the door opened before him, the only thing Joshua could think of to cover up the screaming bruise on his cheek was to, well, put his hand over it. 

“Oh, uh n-no,” he says and starts to _slowly_ rub his eyes as if he was just sleepy, all the while of course, keeping his palm on top of the bruise as best as he can. “Just sleepy, had an all-nighter last night. Was actually just going to Minghao’s to ask if he has uh notes on this one class we have.” he explains.

“What class? I might have it?” Seungkwan offers. Oh, sweet sweet caring Seungkwan, of course he would offer some help. 

“No!” the other two’s eyes widen at the sudden outburst. “I- I mean, no need,” he continues and plays it off with a small chuckle. “It’s for our Anatomy class, we aren’t classmates so it’s fine” he finishes. 

Seungkwan nods, “Oh, alright. But, tell me if you need notes in our other classes okay?” he still offers. Honestly, how could you pass down an offer from someone as sweet as him. Joshua nods and gives him a curt smile. He bids the two farewell and continues walking until he is finally in front of Minghao’s door. One small knock, and that’s all it takes for the other to open up his door in a few seconds.

They had this thing, for emergencies, and this one is definitely a _huge_ emergency. 

“Why? Wha— woah, your,” Joshua removes his hand from his cheek. “Wh- How?” the other asks with wide eyes, and he merely shrugs. “Absolutely no fucking idea.”

“I need your concealer, and your help to cover this up” he says with pleading eyes, which is obviously not really needed but it really showed how desperate Joshua was with the situation. He looked helpless and quite lost. He didn’t know if he had to actually be worried if this was some serious illness or just, whatever they said about some stupid soulmate thing.

The other heaves a sigh, turning around to his makeshift vanity. "You're lucky my concealer is close to your skin tone." he opens the cap and twists it and lightly smears it over the bruise. "Does it hurt?" Minghao asks as he applies the concealer, his eye twitching a bit while he does his job. The bruise looked pretty nasty.

Surprisingly however, Joshua shook his head. "It doesn't? What do you mean it doesn't? That doesn't make any sense, unless your skin is thick but still it should at least hurt?" the other rambled on.

Nonetheless, Minghao finishes up his job. He looks at Joshua, worry very evident on his face. “You sure you’re okay? You know, if anyone is fucking you up just tell me, I’m pretty sure I’d fuck them up worse” he reassures him and the other just laughs. His eyes become slits. That’s the Joshua everyone knows and loves. Whoever or _whatever_ this is, it better not take Joshua’s sweet smile away.

⁂

  
  


This was getting _way_ out of hand.

“Dude, why is your lip all busted? Who fought you?” is what he hears the moment he sits down on their usual spot in the cafeteria. His eyebrows furrow, placing down his tray and dabbing his fingers gently on his bottom lip.

It hurts? For the first time ever since he’s been getting these weird bruises out of nowhere, he can finally _actually_ feel pain when he touches it. Weird.

He looks down at his fingers, and there’s _blood?_

“Okay but for real though, I think you should get that checked up?” Seungkwan suggests and their other friends undoubtedly agree, nodding their heads and pointedly giving him worried looks. “Nah it’s probably just me unconsciously biting my lip a while ago” he responds. Seungkwan gives him a pointed look.

He continues to reassure everyone else and urges them to go back to eating their foods or else he will steal them all away from them.They had to comply though because their Joshua was very precious to them, he had to be protected always.

“Okay but, what was that thing you said before,” he looks at Seungkwan and takes a bite out of a fry. “The thing about bruises and soulmates or something?” Seungkwan had to calmly swallow his food before answering. He raises a hand and dramatically places one hand above his heart while the other grabs his drink. He calms himself down. _It’s my time to shine._

“Didn’t think you’d _ever_ be interested in the soulmate jig. Well, first of all, as the popular phenomenon suggests it said that when you turn 18 whatever bruise your ‘soulmate’ gets you get it as well, same spot and everything, and whatever you get they also get. Here’s the thing though, some people said that when they got bruises and they would touch it it won’t hurt, even if it looked very fucked up” 

_Wait, some people also don’t feel the bruises they get?_

Joshua subtly pays extra attention, this definitely has piqued his interest. The rest also listen intently while eating their lunch. Seungkwan really looked like a grandma telling her children some folklore before bed time while her grandchildren sit around her all cozied up with a blanket and some fresh cookies and warm milk. 

“And they said that if you don’t feel the bruises you get it means that your soulmate is very far from you. So it kinda seems like a ‘warm, cold’ thing, the nearer they are the more it hurts whenever you touch it.” Seungkwan ends with a shrug. “Josh, does your bruise hurt?” it startles the person in question. “I- yes?” he answers anxiously. 

This uncertain answer brings about an explosion of emotions. “Then your soulmate must be near!” Mingyu exclaims and the rest dramatically gasp. “Ooh, I wonder what your soulmate is like,” Seokmin says and stares off at the distance dreamily and Mingyu slaps his nape while laughing. 

“What if it’s just some clumsy dude” Minghao suggests. It _could_ be a possibility, maybe the first one they were doing some crazy routine and with a great amount of energy hit their hand on their table or bookcase or something. And then the second time, maybe they got too excited for some package that was going to be delivered and then they got out of bed too quickly that he got tangled up with his blankets and hit his face on the floor, _hard._ And the lip one, maybe they, well this one is very hard to think of a reason to _accidentally_ get a busted lip.

“What if it’s someone who’s getting bullied though?” Mingyu retorts and effectively saddens everyone in the table. Joshua definitely felt a sting in his chest when he heard this, the fact that someone out there is hurt somehow being able to feel the same pain just didn’t sit well with Joshua. 

“Eh, that’s— let’s not make it sad,” Seokmin breaks the silence. “What if, it’s some fighter” he suggests. “Fighter like, a thug kind of fighter or an MMA kind of fighter?” Jeonghan asks and the other puts a finger on his chin to think about it for a bit. “An MMA kind of fighter!” he concludes and everyone else lets out interested _oohs_.

_That’s— not too bad? I guess?_

“So which one do you want?” Jeonghan nudges him from the right. What is this some kind of dating show? Joshua merely shrugs and tries not to think too much about it because he still doesn’t believe in the whole ‘soulmate’ thing.

But maybe now he kinda does. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> pls, do come scream at me thru [twitter](https://twitter.com/ayyojosh) or [tumblr](https://www.jisoostar.tumblr.com) !
> 
> i live off of ur comments so pls help me live hjkfhgd


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